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Radar Image of 'Christmas Eve' Asteroid 2003 SD2020

Dec. 23, 2015
This image of an asteroid that is at least 3,600 feet (1,100 meters) long was taken on Dec. 17, 2015, by scientists using NASA's 230-foot Deep Space Network antenna at Goldstone, California.

This image of an asteroid that is at least 3,600 feet (1,100 meters) long was taken on Dec. 17, 2015, by scientists using NASA's 230-foot (70-meter) DSS-14 antenna at Goldstone, California. This asteroid, named 2003 SD2020, will safely fly past Earth on Thursday, Dec. 24, at a distance of 6.8 million miles (11 million kilometers).

At the time this image was taken, the asteroid was about 7.3 million miles (12 million kilometers) from Earth. In 2018, this asteroid will fly past Earth at a distance of 1.8 million miles (2.8 million kilometers).

More information about asteroids and near-Earth objects is at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/asteroidwatch. More information about asteroid radar research is at http://echo.jpl.nasa.gov/.

More information about the Deep Space Network is at http://deepspace.jpl.nasa.gov/dsn.

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